Marques de Murrieta Dalmau Tinto Reserva 2016
- JS
- RP
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- WE
- W&S
- WS
Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesRipe and intense red with tempranillo, graciano and a touch of cabernet sauvignon. Jumps out of the glass with crushed flowers and berries. Full body, round and juicy tannins and a flavorful finish. Shows excellent potential.
Barrel Sample: 94-95
Exceptionally, I also tasted an unbottled sample of the 2016 Dalmau Reserva, which will be launched in January 2019, as they want to show the public the change in the 2016 vintage. 2016 saw a very good growing season, and the harvest was in late September. It feels like a very young Bordeaux blend, elegant and powerful. And as I saw in the other 2016 I sampled (the Reserva), this has gained in precision (it fermented at 24 degrees Celsius, quite cold for a red), avoiding too much extraction, and that seems noticeable in the texture and the quality of the tannins, sleek, velvety, more elegant, focused and sophisticated. This has all the traces to be the most elegant and finest vintage of Dalmau to date.
Barrel Sample: 94-95
Opaque ruby. Expansive, oak-spiced cherry, black currant and floral oil aromas are complemented by suggestions of vanilla and licorice. Sweet, seamless and penetrating on the palate, offering intense dark berry, cherry preserve and spice cake flavors and a repeating vanilla note. Shows velvety texture and appealing sweetness on the impressively long, juicy finish, which features repeating florality and polished, slow-building tannin's.
Editors' Choice
A blend of tempranillo (82 percent), cabernet sauvignon (15 percent) and graciano planted in stony, iron-rich clay soils in 1950, this wine is firm and youthfully tense, built to last. The initial mineral scent runs straight through to the end, playing off the herbal savor of bay laurel and the muscular, plummy density.
Hailed as the star red variety in Spain’s most celebrated wine region, Tempranillo from Rioja, or simply labeled, “Rioja,” produces elegant wines with complex notes of red and black fruit, crushed rock, leather, toast and tobacco, whose best examples are fully capable of decades of improvement in the cellar.
Rioja wines are typically a blend of fruit from its three sub-regions: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta and Alavesa, at the highest elevations, are considered to be the source of the brightest, most elegant fruit, while grapes from the warmer and drier, Rioja Oriental, produce wines with deep color, great body and richness.